Classifying breast carcinomas with DNA measurements and morphometry

Abstract

The relation between the DNA distribution pattern and the variables DNA content and nuclear area was investigated in 73 breast carcinomas. According to the DNA patterns, the tumors were subclassified into groups I, 11, 111, and IV (Auer's classification). The Auer's classes correlate with prognosis. In this investigation it was shown that Auer's classes strongly correlate with the standard deviation of DNA content and mean nuclear area. The carcinomas were subclassified using data of DNA content and nuclear area. For the establishment of this subclassification, multivariate analysis was applied. It was evident that Auer's group 111 was a hybrid group. Therefore a second classification rule was calculated without the data of Auer's group 111. This second classification rule was even more successful in determining the Auer's group of each individual case. Our investigation shows that it is possible to subclassify breast carcinomas objectively using DNA content and nuclear area of the tumor cells.

The ‘corpuscle’ stereological problem—re‐evaluation using slab fragment volumes and application to the correction of DNA histograms from sections of spherical nuclei

“…Assumptions 9-1 1 are probably the most vulnerable, although they have also been considered as acceptable by other authors (McCready & Papadimitriou, 1983;Bins & Takens, 1985) for DNA histogram correction schemes. Concerning assumption 9, the variance of the volume, inside a given ploidy peak, is known to be larger than that of the DNA amount (Rowinski et al, 1978) and this is due to the fact that the good volumeDNA correlation observed between different ploidy peaks (review in Rigaut et al, 1982;Boon et al, 1984) is not present inside one peak (Cavalli, 1960). This explains the overlapping which remains between ploidy peaks after unfolding (Fig.…”

“…There is at least one biological case where a relationship of the type C z W / V is generally accepted inside a specific cellular category, the volume ( V ) of the cell nucleus is known to be well correlated linearly to its DNA content (D) (review in Rigaut et al, 1982;Boon et al, 1984). Therefore, with three additional assumptions, our model allows the unfolding of nuclear DNA-content histograms obtained from sections.…”

DNA ploidy analysis in histopathology

“…Next to the ploidy histogram evaluation criteria mentioned above for FCM, specific ICM DNA histogram criteria are the Auer ploidy classes (Figure 2), 9 Boecking's malignancy index, 10 entropy, 11 the 2C deviation index and the 5c‐exceeding rate (5cER) 12 . Certain authors define a tumour as aneuploid if the ICM‐obtained DNA histogram shows one single cell with a 5cER DNA content.…”

Cytometry of breast carcinoma: Significance of ploïdy balance and proliferation index

“…Subsequently, these authors demonstrated that metastases and primary tumors shared the same DNA histogram pattern (5). In addition, nuclear protein content (61, estrogren receptor level (3) and nuclear size (9) were also correlated with these four subgroups. However the proposed classification was limited in that it did not take into account general important biologic parameters which could alter the biologic behavior of cells.…”